How not to follow a recipe…

I’m slightly overwhelmed by other projects today, so here’s an old post from my other online journal that I ran across while looking for something else and found amusing.  Hopefully, you’ll find it amusing too.

Fontina, Cima di Rape and Toasted Almond Pizza, Catherine-style

Step 1. Hmm, I have bok choy AND spinach this week. What am I going to do with all these greens?

Step 2. Consider recipe for pizza with cima di rape. I have no notion what cima di rape is, but in the picture, it looks a bit like silverbeet. Bok choy is a bit like silverbeet…

Step 3. Maybe I can use the bok choy AND the spinach. It does look somewhat like spinach. Somewhat.

Step 4. Hmm, Fontina or Taleggio cheese, eh? Not generally available at Australian supermarkets, and in fact I haven’t a clue what either of these cheeses tastes like…

Step 5. …but really, everything tastes better with Jarlsberg.

Step 6. Ooh, look, I have some feta in the fridge. And a tiny tiny bit of aged cheddar. Everyone know that feta goes with spinach! And Jarlsberg and cheddar combine well…

Step 7. Hmm, this pizza dough would be better if I added a whole lot of herbs to it. Maybe some seeds too, to make it lower GI?

Step 8. How can this recipe not have onion in it? Fortunately, I have half an onion leftover from the stock I made this afternoon…

Step 9. I don’t really like almonds. I think I’ll use pine nuts instead.

Step 10. Notice for the first time the title of the recipe: Fontina, Cima di Rape and Toasted Almond Pizza. Realise that I am not using a single one of these ingredients…

Step 11. Consider whether I have perhaps gone a step too far in adapting this recipe?

Step 12. Conclude that it is a little late for someone who is putting bok choy on a pizza to pretend to delicate culinary sensibilities which she clearly does not have…

Step 13. Sigh. Here I am, owner of probably several hundred cookbooks, and I STILL can’t follow a recipe…

… I wrote this three years ago.  The only thing that has changed is that I now make random leafy green, pine-nut and feta pizza often enough that I’d forgotten what the original ingredients were…